The superiority of bamboo-like texture and flavor has made bamboo a leading choice in the field of indoor and outdoor decoration where styles are simple, unsophisticated and elegant. Commonly, bamboo sheets used in building constructions such as floors or wall panels are made by gluing and then pressing bamboo strips or blanks together. In a common pressing process of bamboo strips or blanks after they have been glued, there are three main factors which should be adjusted according to different thickness or properties of the bamboo strips or blanks: temperature, pressure and pressing time.
Bamboo strip here means a raw bamboo slat cut by woodworking machinery at any length or width according to its utilizability; and bamboo blank here means a bamboo plate formed by gluing and pressing several bamboo strips together in direction of width or length. As the same as wood, the process of lengthening the bamboo strips or blanks is necessary for forming bamboo sheets of a large area. One traditional process of the lengthening is to make a groove at one end of a bamboo strip or blank and a corresponding tenon at one end of another bamboo strip or blank, then engage the groove and the tenon with each other. There are two primary shortcomings of this kind of connection. First, because the tenon is simply embedded into the groove, or at most, an adhesive is used in addition to the connecting, the transverse connecting strength is weak. Second, this kind of connection results in an unattractive seam between the two pieces where dust or dirt can easily be trapped inside and is difficult to remove.
Bamboo is one of the most abundant natural resources in China. Although the sheet or section materials made of bamboo or wood seem very similar, there are a lot of differences between them actually. Bamboo is unique for its hollow interior and its stem is the only thing that can be used to make the sheets. Furthermore, bamboo canes normally have a big bottom and a small top, and that makes the bottom part of the stem much thicker than the top part. Also, with its tubular structure and curved surface, bamboo is limited in the applications as sheets or section materials. Generally, after peeling off the outer surface layer and inner surface layer, a rectangular bamboo strip unit is only about 0.3-1.0 cm thick, 0.5-2.5 cm wide, and is almost unable to be used as a long length section material.
A traditional process for making the bamboo sheets is to agglutinate and then press the bamboo strips or blanks together. According to the different specifications of bamboo strips or blanks, as wells as the nature of the adhesive, different temperature, pressure and pressing time should be chosen carefully.
Moreover, the existing technology is limited to the manufacturing of bamboo sheets, and the process of making bamboo section materials has not been established. For its extraordinary characteristics such as high stability, non-deformation, high hardness and strength, short production circle, etc., bamboo can be made into a section material of any thickness, width or length, so as to achieve the purpose of replacing lumber or even steel.